KIEV, Ukraine – Detroit’s public schools are in shambles, but American Federation of Teachers President Rhonda Weingarten spent last week in Ukraine on a “solidarity” tour.

Schools in Philadelphia, New York City, Chicago and other cities with teachers represented by the AFT are in equally bad shape, plagued by union expenses and work rules that stifle learning.

Instead of focusing on the serious problems at home, Weingarten was having “conversations about democracy” and “how to promote democratic values” with leaders of the Trade Union of Education and Science Workers of Ukraine in Kiev, Fox News reports.

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Our government employs a Secretary of State – currently John Kerry – to do that kind of work. He doesn’t need Weingarten’s help.

EAGnews’ Kyle Olson pointed out last week how Weingarten’s dues-funded trip sheds light on her misguided priorities, and other critics are now taking note, as well.

“It doesn’t sound like it’s really a policy matter; more publicity than policy,” Mackinac Center for Public Policy spokesman Ted O’Neil told Fox News. “I would like to hear her say that her next trip will be here to Michigan to try to help Detroit’s public schools, which is an AFT affiliate, rather than globetrotting.”

In many states, teachers are forced to contribute to the AFT through mandatory automatic dues deductions, and school employees have little to no say in how union officials use the money. That’s how Weingarten’s foreign excursions are funded.

In right-to-work states like Michigan, educators and other school employees are free to make their own decisions about union membership, and can opt out if they don’t approve of how their unions do business.

That freedom is critical, O’Neil said, to holding leaders like Weingarten accountable for how they use  union resources.

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“It really points out why policies such as Right to Work are so important because I don’t necessarily know that this is what union dues should go for,” O’Neil said of Weingarten’s Ukraine tour. “I’m sure there are a lot of AFT members who would be surprised to learn that their union is taking up foreign policy, so to speak.”

Weingarten told the media the cost of her three-day trip to the Ukraine was paid in part by her host, as well as her union. She was among a delegation of teacher union bosses from five nations – including the United Kingdom, Poland, Denmark and Bulgaria – that made the trip to stand in solidarity with their Ukrainian comrades.

“It’s always been a part of who we are,” Weingarten said. “I decided it was important enough to go, and the most important thing I’ve learned during this trip is that the Russian propaganda about how the Ukrainian government is fragile and destabilizing is totally and completely wrong.”

That’s nifty, but it begs some simple questions: When will America’s public education problems be “important enough” to warrant Weingarten’s full attention? And how does the AFT boss’ trip to the Ukraine help American students who have languished in schools staffed with AFT members for decades?